


a secure embrace

by meikuree (rillarev), rillarev



Series: maybe it's my hard head that keeps me dreaming [4]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Universe, Developing Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Light Angst, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Pining, Slow Burn, sort of? if i turn this into a series which i might
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25444993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillarev/pseuds/meikuree, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillarev/pseuds/rillarev
Summary: “Just wish I could do something about the pain,” Annie complained.Pieck smiled softly beside her. “I can stay here and massage you if you like, you know.”Annie wakes up with a terrible backache. Pieck helps her with it. Feelings ensue.
Relationships: Annie Leonhart & Pieck, Annie Leonhart/Pieck
Series: maybe it's my hard head that keeps me dreaming [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652560
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	a secure embrace

**Author's Note:**

> this is pretty much the product of my indulgent 3 am oneshot ideas 
> 
> sort of canon-divergent au ish: annie is back in marley after paradis for some reason, somehow. idk man. i just want them to have some wholesome and soft interactions together and be in the same place at the same time. a girl can dream 
> 
> enjoy the gay yearning and fluff

Annie was someone used to punching above her own weight. By virtue of that and the ease with which she regularly dispatched adversaries larger than her at her fingertips, she failed sometimes to expect obstacles that arose closer at hand from her own body.

The full force of that sentiment hit her as she stirred from fitful sleep to the offending sensation of a stabbing pain at her shoulders. _Painful_ didn’t quite cut it— it was a frankly almost excruciating ache, and felt as if it was laying splinters to her body from somewhere beneath her skin. The unpleasant ache was palpable all over her back, but especially concentrated below her shoulders. 

Her frustration reared its head. This was not an impediment she could tangibly sink her claws into. She pieced things together, and recalled moments of the day before: throwing her all into close-combat training, an ominous _click_ in her arms, and a momentary shot of thrumming discomfort running up her elbows and sides. She’d thought nothing of it then, and ploughed on until she was properly footsore and fatigued at the end. She couldn’t fault the situation, she realized with annoyance and a disgruntled frown: this was a logical result from pushing too far beyond her limits, or a body’s protest.

In the glare of rays of fretful daylight, frittered into pieces by the glass of her squat window, she thought unhappily about the plans she would have to cancel and change. Training or sparring was out of the question. If this kept up, she’d be lucky not to be stuck resting all day. It was still early— the clock read six in the morning— and Pieck was snoring gently in the bed at the opposite end of their compact room. She tried to move to reach for the glass of water on her nightstand, and immediately regretted it. The pain jabbed further into her upper back and she was forced back reluctantly onto the bed.

She considered her options, the clock’s ticking the only thing to keep her company. Sleep was the only out available at this time.

She turned into bed and shielded her eyes from the approaching sun, trying to ignore the pressing ache all the while.

* * *

She next woke to a kindly face looking at her from the opposite bed. 

“You're up,” Pieck said, head dipped in a quizzical look upon her palms. “You don't usually sleep till this late.” _What’s wrong?_ Annie could hear in her voice.

The pain had abated slightly, but it still exerted a steady presence. She roused herself drearily, and tried to scan her surroundings as best as she could with a neck that couldn’t turn without pain. Pieck was already dressed in her civilian clothes: an ordinary jacket and long skirt. Annie’s eyes adjusted to the light, now flooding the room with an unfortunately strident afternoon glow, and slowly opened to their full size. She tried to turn herself over to face Pieck, and groaned at the attempt.

“I'm not feeling great,” Annie muttered.

“Are you unwell?” Pieck asked in a concerned tone. She leaned forward a little towards Annie, as if about to get up to go to her side.

“Got a bodyache,” Annie said, and finally got her body to turn over properly. She hissed from the sharp twinge she felt as it did so. She was not a creature especially given to metaphor, and yet she felt as if only the most particular of language could give voice to the shape of her pain. “An earth-shattering one.”

She signaled to Pieck that she needed water, and Pieck brought the glass that had been on the nightstand to her parched lips. As Annie tried to rise, she winced, and Pieck mercifully helped her the rest of the way up. She downed the water in a thirsty gulp, her heart growing in gratitude.

“Don't think I’m in the condition to do anything today,” she said in a mournful voice as she palmed her face, “my back’s killing me.”

Pieck gave an emphatic nod, her brows furrowed. “It definitely looks bad.” _You’re not one to let a common ache stop you,_ was the unspoken understanding.

“I’m not sure how I’m going to tell Magath about this,” Annie said with dawning ambivalence.

“I’ll get Zeke to put in a word for you,” Pieck reassured, her face tilted towards Annie, “don’t worry about that.”

Truth be told, Annie could think of little else she wanted to do besides sleep; it wasn’t just yesterday (although that was the most immediate catalyst), but the whole series of recent days where she’d had few moments of respite from the necessary work of training to be better at fighting. Awake now, however, she willed herself not to fall back to bed, enticed by the inviting conversationalist beside her. Whatever Pieck promised to do, she could be trusted to carry it out. She was reliable always, the unabating bedrock among the Warriors, and Annie’s worries waned.

“You’re a godsend,” Annie spoke, and a smile pricked at her lips in spite of how she felt. 

“Anything else you want?” Pieck smiled back, and sat down beside her, shoulder to shoulder, on the firm bed.

Annie’s head dipped in thought, hand absently massaging her shoulders as best as she could. Pieck’s question hung unintrusively between them, a genuinely open-ended query.

 _Want_ , not need; the choice of words made Annie feel less compunction about asking for the things she could use right now, and she appreciated it silently. She could not muster the energy, however, to brainstorm concertedly. Her tired mind was almost narrowly focused on the blistering pain. 

She sought a distraction, and raised her palm to clutch at one of Pieck’s hands. Pieck responded by placing her other hand atop Annie’s. She gave a comforting squeeze as she waited for Annie to arrive at a response. 

“Just wish I could do something about the pain,” Annie groused. 

Pieck smiled beside her, and then spoke instantly, as if the thought came naturally to her: “I can stay here and massage you if you like, you know.”

A quiet beat intervened between the two of them before Annie registered, with a fierce flush of bewilderment, what Pieck had suggested. She hadn’t expected Pieck to say that, and the relaxed confidence with which Pieck caught her by surprise. Any other person would have withered within ten miles of Annie's unrelenting coldness before they ever came close to thinking up such an idea. Pieck, evidently, was not one to be tethered to such scripts or constraints. Annie's mind short-circuited briefly; her thoughts had been wandering to other, less involved things like getting her some food. Having Pieck do that had been on the list of things she thought were too frivolous to ask for. 

This close to Pieck, she hoped her pulse wouldn’t do anything to give her away with the way it suddenly rose in tempo, although her face remained calm as ever. She doubted she had ever gotten a massage from anyone-- she tried to rifle through her recollection, and came up short. It wasn't something anyone had ever offered to her. She thought back to her father’s teachings, and the way he held instruction on how to heal from the physical exertion his lessons exacted at a conspicuous arm’s length. The possibility that she would be bogged down by physical injury did not enter the picture. She was, after all, intended for stalwart battle.

But she was too mentally haggard to protest a massage, despite her reluctance at imposing on Pieck, and it sounded like a good thing. If anything, it was a novel experience she could raise her eyebrows at.

“That sounds... agreeable,” she said.

Pieck rose from the bed to walk to her drawer, rummaging briefly for something. Annie looked on curiously. She promptly returned with a small jar containing a gel-like substance in her hands. 

“What’s that?”

Pieck’s smile broadened. “I’ve got a balm for aches right here, from my father, and it’ll help your pain with a massage.”

She sat down again on the bed, and looked at Annie. “How about it? Only if you think it’d help, of course.”

Annie nodded in assent. She moved aside to give Pieck space, and positioned herself so that her back faced Pieck. Pieck shifted into a half-kneel upon the bed, and Annie felt the bed dip with her new weight.

“I'm just going to move your hair out of the way,” Pieck narrated, and she gathered Annie’s stray hairs to draw them over her shoulder. Then she took a dollop of the off-white balm from the small jar, and applied it to her fingers.

That done, she kneaded gently at Annie’s shoulders, which were exposed through her tank top, and thumbed at the tender muscles there. The warmth of her satin hands felt good, and Annie almost leaned her head back to sigh in relief. Her fingers knew where to press and apply pressure, without Annie directing her. She supposed she ought not to be surprised; Pieck was surely also used to training pains, and knew where to target her attentions out of personal experience. 

“Just there,” Annie encouraged. 

“Where else does it hurt?” Pieck asked. 

Annie paused. “The whole of my back,” she replied. 

Pieck continued massaging her shoulders, but she was silent as if in deep thought. Finally, she spoke up.

“Is it okay if you remove your top to let me get at it?”

Her voice remained level, but the air suddenly grew heavy with a tension. She knew Pieck was worried that her question could have been a personal affrontation.

Annie swallowed the lump in her throat. 

“You don't have to--” Pieck hastened to add. 

“It’s alright. I don't mind.”

Her voice came out slightly strained. Whatever sweet hell she was in, she might as well go all the way, she decided. Before either of them had time to say anything that could break the spell, she removed her tank top to give Pieck better access, revealing her chest band and bare back. Pieck paused for only a brief second before humming appreciatively and, without fanfare, getting back to work. Annie could almost hear her smiling behind her. She rested her elbows on her knees, facing forward, and held her breath as Pieck's fingers skidded across the expanse of her back. 

It wasn't as if she hadn't expected this to be a little more intimate than usual. In the split second she’d taken to agree, she’d taken note of that near-certainty. But this was truly more than what she’d expected to bargain with. Her face was beginning to redden just a little, despite herself, and she prayed the blush wouldn't spread to her neck or back. Nobody had exactly come into such close quarters with her before, taking care of her so gently and attentively. The sensations of Pieck’s impossibly soft hands were ardently distracting. She tried not to dwell on how endlessly _nice_ this was with how close she was to Pieck, and how Pieck had a detailed gaze of the minutiae of her vulnerable back with all its scars and scrapes. 

_You're a fool, Annie Leonhart,_ she thought, as she felt Pieck’s fingers dart across her sinews and muscles, her sore and aching body. _You should have expected this situation._

The— she tried to think of an appropriately precise but not runaway word— burgeoning _affection_ she felt for Pieck of late was not something that gave her undue discomfort, but she wasn’t sure how far Pieck would be fine with… whatever it was. She was a staunch believer in boundaries, and she wasn’t about to subject another person to emotions that were her own responsibility to set straight.

Meanwhile Pieck loosened a stubborn knot near the small of her back, and she resisted the moan of satisfaction bubbling into her mouth. She suddenly became conscious of her awkward and stiff demeanor, and searched for something to do with her hands.

She turned to small talk as an alternative. Besides, there were some things she was genuinely curious about.

“How did you learn to do this?”

“My mother— before she died— taught me how to massage her and to do it for other people. I’d say I’m pretty good at it.”

She was silent for a moment, sizing up the weight of the death of Pieck’s mother in her mental palms, but then laughed softly. She said her next words trying her best to sound matter-of-fact. “You definitely are.”

“Thanks,” Pieck chuckled. 

They fell into a more comfortable (for Annie) silence of understanding after that. Pieck continued until she was satisfied with her handiwork, and in the intervening time Annie experienced fifteen of the most blissful minutes she had in a while. Her back began to tingle with a comforting, warm sensation from the balm. She mourned the loss of Pieck’s hands when Pieck lifted them off her back. 

“I hope that helped,” Pieck said as she settled down on her haunches.

Annie gathered up her top and slipped it on again, guiding it down her back. She looked back at Pieck, hoping her face had returned to its original colour. Her left arm raised itself and touched the upper part of her back.

“Much better,” she said, and could not stop the astonishment from entering her voice. “Thank you.”

Pieck brightened visibly, and capped her small jar. She rose to return the jar to her nightstand. 

“Wait,” Annie interjected, fearing that Pieck would be making her exit now, “do you have anywhere to be?”

“I was just going to talk to Zeke and Magath about giving you a day to rest,” Pieck turned around. “Not much else on, I'm afraid. I've just been reading.”

“I think I'm going to sleep,” Annie murmured, “but I don’t feel safe here alone.”

Pieck picked up on her tacit request. “I’ll come back when I'm free,” she nodded as she leaned against the nightstand, her face lighting up.

“I'm in your debt.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Pieck laughed, her hand fiddling with the spread-eagled book she had placed on the table’s surface. “It’s good to have your company.”

Her heart skipped a subtle beat at what Pieck said, but she pushed it aside mentally for the time being. Drowsiness was now descending upon her now, and she spread herself out to lie down on her bed. Pieck glanced at her for a few seconds, and then made her way over to sit beside her. Content to spend a few more minutes there, she stroked her fingers through Annie’s hair. Annie relaxed into her touch, her worries about her pain drifting away. Her heart felt buoyant, even if her face didn't show it. 

_I hope we spend more time together like this,_ she wished silently, and wandered off into selenial sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> not stated in the fic, but pieck doesn't have to go for training because she's still tired and recovering from all the effort she spent carrying the team back in paradis. poor girl
> 
> come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://meikuree.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/meikuree)


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